September 2011

September 29, 2011

Ethan Stiefel's 2012 season for the Royal New Zealand Ballet begins with a program called "NYC" – get it? It actually stands for New Young Classic and will be a program consisting of three short pieces from the Big Apple: a brand new work by Larry Keigwin, Millepied's 28 Variations on a Theme by Paganini, and Balanchine's Who Cares. Next up will be Angelina Ballerina's Big Audition followed by Cinderella. Closing the season will be the new Stiefel/Kobborg production of Giselle with Gillian Murphy in the title role.

RNZB's handsome 2012 brochure is already up on its Facebook page and a YouTube video of Stiefel's 2012 announcement is loaded into its channel.

This is ambitious and has pizzazz. Wonder if they've penciled in a date yet for a Joyce Theater debut.

September 28, 2011

If new ballets acquired by the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre could spend six weeks in a Broadway-style out-of-town tryout in a suburban Toronto theater, we might get a lot better stuff come opening nights here in New York. Choreographers could see what works with the audience, test out solutions, and fine tune the steps, sets, music, and costumes. But in ballet there's no money to do that.

Even if NYCB or ABT could afford a little breathing room to look at a piece on stage for a while before opening in New York, it's not likely that they could get it. Case in point: who really thinks that The New York Times won't send a critic to Bard this fall for the new Volpi ballet or to Orange County in March to assess Ratmansky's new Firebird before it opens in New York during ABT's spring Met season? Those are going to be "on the record" premieres just as though they had occurred in Manhattan.

The conglomerate media is under intense pressure to be the first to shout out the news. The Times got its nose out of joint last winter when Ratmansky's Nutcracker opened with a "preview" performance to which the press was not invited. Bloggers and forum posters, who bought tickets to see the performance, raved about the production all over the internet and bought more tickets before the Times or any other paper got to throw in their two cents worth of "influential" criticism. Haglund proudly confesses to being among those who spoiled the party for them.

Last week before the McCartney/Martins Ocean's Kingdom premiered, it had already failed in the eyes of many critics who didn't just write reviews that essentially said, "I hated it." Instead, they said, "I hated it. You disappointed me (again), and I want to hurt you."

As Haglund sat watching and listening to Ocean's Kingdom again last night, it seemed that this ballet has lots of possibilities that a strong editor or someone functioning as an executive producer could sift through to make the piece enjoyable for everyone. The ballet suffers from too much collaboration. It needs to be cut down. It needs more steps and greater differentiation among the PdDs. It needs to rein in the costuming. The lighting and set designs are keepers, however.

By the way, it could have been a lot worse. Imagine if Peter Martins had brought in a freakin' guest artist to dance the principal role. Jeez Louise, let's not go there right now.

Between now and the Winter Season, can we expect anyone to work on Ocean's Kingdom? Hope so – there's much to gain by doing so and much to lose by not. Sir Paul mentioned on NPR that he's going to write a piece of "experimental" music. Wouldn't it be nice to see the NYCB dancers get a crack at that?

September 26, 2011

ABT has posted its Nutcracker casting for BAM. Same casts as last year with a few EXCITING additions – Sarah Lane and Joseph Gorak on December 21st and 31st, and Hee Seo and Eric Tamm on December 15th, 20th, and 26th. Lane and Gorak were not a combination that Haglund ever envisioned, but putting these two together is genius, and it will be so exciting to see Gorak's brilliance and danseur elegance under the spotlight.

September 25, 2011

Haglund caught the final two performances ofApollo over the weekend and must say that Robert Fairchild's and Chase Finlay's Apollos along with the Muse team of Sterling Hyltin, Tiler Peck, and Ana Sophia Scheller have become the casts to see. When ballet can deal from this kind of strength, it makes one think that we might be building a new era of Glory Days at NYCB. That is, unless the company spirals into financial ruin from Executive Director Katherine Brown's pricing gimmicks.

On Friday and Saturday nights, once again, there were so many empty seats. The house looked ridiculous with a virtually empty 4th ring except for a couple of subscribers who are holding their ground. Haglund may award these 4th Ring Warriors a Pump Bump for their tenacity. The other ring levels had pockets of seats filled because they were less expensive while many of the overpriced seats in the front and center stayed empty. The orchestra level had multiple blocks of four, six and even eight seats that were empty in the very center section. Hopefully, and soon, Ms. Brown will not let the door hit her in the fanny on the way out.

Back to the wonderful dancers who deserve so much praise. Ana Sophia Scheller, who has been performing at the highest principal level although she remains a soloist, danced the role of Calliope on both nights with clarity and confidence. From a technical standpoint, there is nothing that she cannot do. The expansive use of the upper body, in particularly, the way in which the port de bras originates from across her back gives her a classic ballerina posture and finish. Haglund is generally less inclined to attend NYCB performances that involve classic tulle and tutus because he is usually much less happy with the dancers' port de bras, but Ms. Scheller may be the one to get Haglund to more of those performances.

Tiler Peck was a phenomenal Polyhymnia in both performances and flawlessly managed each of the tricky pique pirouettes into arabesque all the while holding her finger to her lips. She was on fire in Wheeldon's Mercurial Manoeuvres Saturday night – as were her partner, Tyler Angle, and Gonzalo Garcia, the third principal. All of them sliced through the petit allegro with characteristic NYCB hunger. Peck and Angle soared through the lovely PdDs with such joy and ease and are so attractive together that they are becoming one of Haglund's favorite duos. Wheeldon's PdDs in Mercurial Manoevres are inventive yet beautiful from a balletic standpoint. There is none of the offensive splitzy crotch emphasis that began to develop in Wheeldon's choreography shortly after Mercurial Manoevres.

In all of her performances of Apollo this fall, Sterling Hyltin has been a youthful, delightful Terpsichore. On Saturday night, watching from the right side of the house, Haglund noticed that Hyltin's passés to arabesque were not really to the back but were considerably off to the side. That's an old school NYCB bad habit that doesn't surface much anymore. In the PdDs, Hyltin was well matched with both Fairchild and Finlay who are Apollos of very different temperaments and states of maturity.

NYCB is such a handsome company these days, full of different types of dancers who represent a broad spectrum of stage personalities. The energy level is high. The neatness level in the corps is high. The joy of performing is off the charts. At the end of the day, a guy can plop down in a chair in the theater and before he knows it, he's forgotten about the crappy day, the crappy economy, and the crappy world news. NYCB Therapy – or should we call it Therapy NYCB. Whatever. It's all good.

Haglund bestows the Weekend Pump Bump Award, a fierce looking Balmain leather sandal with tribal beading – available through Neiman Marcus for $disgraceful.00 – to those 4th Ring Warriors who are making the Tribe proud by holding out.

Ali: Helleeeeww. It's me. I've got a block on this Ocean's Kingdom review. I can't wrap my head around it. What are the twits and bloggers saying? What's that Hellish Heel say?

Copy boy in tight jeans: You mean Hag–

Ali: Sshhh! We must talk in code. It's Hellish Heel. We must talk in code. Otherwise I could end up having to give a research credit in my review. You heard what happened to poor Connie after she stole all those ideas about the Staten Island Art Walk from the little blogger without noting in her article where she'd done her research. My God, Romenesko had a field day with it. The last thing that I need is to find myself on Romenesko's radar.

Copy boy in tight jeans: He's retiring from Poynter.org, you know.

Ali: Retiring? That's good to hear.

Copy boy in tight jeans: He's starting his own blog.

Ali: Oh my God, No! Please, not another dance blog!

Copy boy in tight jeans: No, Silly Ali. A media blog.

Ali: Oh, that's a relief. Now, help me with this Ocean's thing.

Copy boy in tight jeans: Well, the very first thing Hellish says is that the music is the most gorgeous ballet score to come along in years. He thinks our girl's costume makes her look like a Sherman tank and that the finale is as weak as an Olympics parade.

Ali: What?! He can't make a pronouncement like that. Only I can make such pronouncements. I must respond. I must fire back. I must execute an opening line with such skill and force that it will make everyone in twitter and blogger land shudder at my literary powers.

Copy boy in tight jeans: Ali, why is that important?

Ali: That's it! It's not important. It's not important at all. I will make it not important. I so-o-o love the word "important" and when I can "not" it, it becomes even more delicious.

Copy boy in tight jeans: Actually, I'm not following what you are saying.

Ali: I will simply pronounce that Paul McCartney's score is in no way important. That's it! I've got it! It will make me look important if I use the word "important" in my first sentence.

Copy boy in tight jeans: Actually, I think it will make you look like a pompous ass.

September 23, 2011

Paul McCartney's Ocean Kingdom is the most gorgeous new ballet score to come along in years. It's full of lush, beautiful, hummable melodies – tunes that have a tendency to play as infinite loops in your mind for hours at a time. It is expressive and emotional, and is well coordinated with the libretto, also written by McCartney. Sir Paul shares credit for the musical arrangement with John Wilson, and the orchestration was done by Andrew Cottee. Their collaborations have produced a beauty, that's for sure.

Tonight before the actual ballet performance began, NYCB's music director, Faycal Karoui, presented a "See the Music..." segment which explored aspects of McCartney's score. This was a wonderful opportunity for the audience to become acquainted with some of the most passionate melodies of the score before having to process them along with choreography, costumes, and scenery. If Haglund hadn't already pre-ordered the CD a few weeks ago, tonight's presentation would have had him rushing to do so.

Ocean's Kingdom is the story of a sea princess who falls in love with a prince from the earthly kingdom. The prince's older brother, who happens to be king, wants the sea princess for himself. He kidnaps her and imprisons her for a while. She's finally rescued, and lives happily ever after with the prince. There are maidens and punks, entertainers, drunkards, and others. This is a perfect ballet story. It's all that is needed to support choreographic material without handcuffing it to a lot of story details that don't convert to dance.

The choreography that Peter Martins devised for Ocean's Kingdom was a little prosaic although the movement choreographed to the third musical section, Imprisonment, was dramatic and interesting, as were most of the sections for the Terra Punks – a dozen deadly fellows from the earthly kingdom who intrude upon the serenity of the underwater kingdom. Choreography for the character Scala, who is in charge of the princess' handmaidens but who also is a traitor to her boss and facilitates a kidnapping, was quite revealing. It gave NYCB's most dramatic artist, Georgina Pazcoguin, an opportunity to shine brightly. The individual variations of principal dancers Sara Mearns, Robert Fairchild, and Amar Ramasar were not badly conceived and were danced boldly. Fairchild, especially, was able to insert dynamic qualities into his time alone on stage.

But the PdDs were a problem. The leggy wrap-around, over the shoulder acrobatic moves often had an awkwardness to them, in part, because of the physical types of the principals. Some of the phrases reminded one of Lubovitch's Othello and any number of MacMillan's efforts, and they might have worked much better on another set of dancers elsewhere. But Mearns is not a tiny, lithe, flexible Ferri and Fairchild does not have the partnering power of someone like Gomes. The theatrical effect of their efforts was not spectacular. It all looked like hard work.

The PdD for the "Exotic Couple" Megan LeCrone and Craig Hall was just dreadful and un-exotic. Seeing the manipulations and the extreme use of the extremities took Haglund back to Martins' Calcium Light Night. LeCrone, instead of being costumed in red, was in a hideous yellow unitard. More on the costumes later. This section of the ballet should be excised immediately, and in fact, the Movement II which was designed to display the virtuosity of several gifted dancers needs to be totally re-thought. It didn't work within the context of the libretto and wasn't complimentary to anyone.

The corps work for the women was uninspiring. These ladies can do a lot more than run around waving the bat-wings of their Halloween costumes. The first minute or so of the ballet when the ladies bourree back and forth and around Mearns' sea princess was beautiful and enhanced enormously by the stunning theatrical lighting designed by Mark Stanley. Stanley did a fab job throughout the night especially with the Imprisonment section in which the prison bars were created with spot lights from above the stage. The remainder of the corps women's choreographic assignment was fairly dull and distracting. The final parade of all the dancers had the look of an Olympics closing ceremony, not a ballet by one of the world's greatest companies.

Now to Stella McCartney's costumes. Haglund's main complaint is that they were not responsive to the romanticism, lyricism, and beauty of the musical composition. They were certainly expressive, but with an independence that shouted "Look at me!" as opposed to trying to enhance and further the efforts of the artistic team. The one exception was the design for the Terre Punks. Their unitards of black designs on flesh colored fabric and the mohawk headpieces were really neat and worked well with the choreography. The costume design for the sea princess was like something out of an Art Stone catalog. It was a Grecian-like, flimsy short skirted piece with attached flowing scarf-train that got in the way of every PdD move and obscured many of Mearns' lines. She should have been in a sea-colored unitard that was painted to give her a waistline, not a bunch of fabric that made her look like a Sherman tank. Some of the unitard costumes were of the type that might have shown up in a Cunningham or Graham production, but were sorely out of place in this ballet and did not reflect the emotional expressivity of the score.

The theatrical makeup design by Pat McGrath should be dumped except for the Terre Punks and Scala. It obscured the dancers' expressions although it seemed to work well with the costumes.

All in all, it was a pretty exciting night. Paul McCartney and Haglund hadn't seen each other since August 27, 1964 at the Cincinnati Gardens when McCartney was a Beatle and Haglund was a grade schooler. McCartney went on to do more great things and become a Sir, while Haglund – well, he writes this blog. Anyway, what a great reunion it was. What sensational style Sir Paul brought to NYCB with his beautiful music which was played magnificently by the NYCB Orchestra. All of it is worth a repeat trip to the theater.

September 22, 2011

A lot of people missed a fab performance last night at NYCB. There were so few people there that it had the feel of a donors' dress rehearsal event. The fourth ring was completely empty. The orchestra level had long sections of empty prime seats. The rings were a little fuller. The third ring's first couple of rows were filled, followed by mostly empty rows above which the FFRS were corralled. (FFRS = Former Fourth Ring Society) When some of the FFRS tried to move down into empty seats for a better view and more air, the weapons-bearing ushers pounced on them and issued citations to appear next Monday before NYCB Executive Director Katherine Brown for FFRS tongue branding. What a terrible nightmare. Whatever. Ms. Brown's new pricing strategy is a big, fat failure that is driving away the audience and alienating the most faithful. Ms. Brown, herself, is making lots of money, though.

Christopher Wheeldon's extremely likeable Mercurial Manoeuvres was on last night's bill and received sharp, exciting, and personable performances by Tiler Peck, Tyler Angle, Gonzalo Garcia, Lauren King, and Brittany Pollack. Garcia, in a bold red unitard, blazed through the choreography and had an especially good night from a technical standpoint, including a pirouette where the revolutions appeared to begin in attitude to the back, evolved to retire, and finally ended with the attitude in the front - that's the best description that Haglund can give. King and Pollack as demi-soloists flew through their manoeuvres with extreme joy and faultless precision. The PdDs of Peck and Angle were filled with inventive, balletic lifts punctuated with instant stops as the dancers' energies soared. After an initial couple of "Glass Pieces" intro moments where it seemed there might be a collision on stage, the corps snapped into form and ended with what can only be described as thrilling perfection in the finale. Mercurial Manoeuvres repeats on Saturday night with the same cast of dancers. They're hot, and you want to be there to see them.

Apollo with Chase Finlay, Sterling Hyltin, Ashly Isaacs, and Ana Sophia Scheller was far more than enjoyable although not the best performance that Haglund has seen from these dancers. Finlay could have been working off of a long, hard day of rehearsals and was throwing whatever energy he had left without always being able to control the end result. However, from an audience standpoint, that is the preferred response to fatigue as opposed to settling for marking steps and resting between counts as sometimes happens elsewhere in Ballet Land. Apollo at NYCB is in fine shape with Finlay and Robert Fairchild at the helm.

Also on the program was Robbins 2&3 Part Inventions in which Lauren Lovette and Ashley Laracey danced with matured musicality and nice breadth within the port de bras.

These days, Haglund looks forward more and more to each performance by Gonzalo Garcia. And while some may view it as not fair for Garcia to receive two consecutive HH Pump Bump Awards, just remember – "life is very short, and there's no ti-i-i-i-ime for fussing and fighting, my friend . . . We can work it out." Christian Louboutin's serpentine with red tongue - only $180 – awarded to Garcia:

September 21, 2011

A sneak peek at the new ballet in action, an interview with Peter Martins, and a nice little article from NY1 right here. This premiere on Thursday is going to be a big, big event - even by New York standards.

Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, and Bill Clinton – all in the same week. Haglund may not survive.

September 20, 2011

NYT reports that David Hallberg will join the Bolshoi while continuing to perform with ABT and other companies on a limited basis.

Meanwhile, down under, Ethan Stiefel and Gillian Murphy have given a few recent interviews (here and here) from which the following information was taken:

Gillian will dance with ABT at the Met, but spend most of her time in New Zealand where next year she will dance the title role of Giselle in the new Stiefel/Kobberg version and Cinderella.

Stiefel's first programming choices for the Royal New Zealand Ballet include works by Larry Keigwin and Benjamin Millepied, and he hopes to build the company's talent, repertory, and capacity to enable more international touring - including a visit to the U.S.

Where are those ABT internal promotions to principal? We need to see no fewer than SIX.

September 19, 2011

The New York Times continues to hit low(s) with its dance criticism. Brian Seibert, a creative writing teacher and author of books on tap dancing who dabbles in writing about other dance forms, reviewed NYCB's Friday night rep program for the paper. His piece, which bears the dirty thumb print of Alastair Macaulay, included the following:

"At the “Balanchine Black & White” program on Friday night Robert Fairchild was not making his first appearance as Apollo. The situation was worse than that." Huh?

"[Fairchild's] Apollo contained suggestions of Method acting." Did the NYT editor cut Seibert's reasons for this dull and overused slight or the explanation for why it even mattered?

"But, as Terpsichore, Sterling Hyltin was too much of a debutante, prissily playing hard to get." Prissily? A debutante? Again, did the NYT editor ax something like: Hyltin (did this, this, and that with her - insert dance steps) making her look too much like a ....? Doubt it. Like Macaulay, this writer just threw the jabs without justification.

In reference to Rebecca Krohn's debut in the final section of Episodes in which she subbed for Sara Mearns, Seibert complained that Krohn "looked tentative" – yes, looked, not danced but looked. His tap experience told him that she should have been more "expansive" in response to the music. This jab was nothing more than Macaulay expressing disappointment that Mearns, an extraordinary dancer who is wonderful in the role but who nevertheless rarely observes ballet's values of modesty or restraint, didn't dance as originally cast, and that a completely different type of dancer was substituted. Krohn was outstanding in her debut and interpreted her section in the tradition of the past greats Helene Alexapoulos and Stephanie Saland rather than Macaulay's current preferred dancer.

And finally, there was one last Macaulay-inspired jab at Ashley Bouder for "habitual posturing" with her chin. Exactly what is one's chin supposed to do when one is in a choleric state?

Can't the New York Times find a dance critic who knows something about ballet AND can write for a general readership? How about volunteers. Pia? Laura? Wendy? Couldn't somebody please spare some time for the Times? It might even persuade Haglund to buy a digital subscription – but probably not.